[Georgia 03] Fallen

finger was removed. There were other tests that would prove definitively whether or not the digit belonged to Evelyn in the first place. It looked like a woman’s finger, but Faith had never spent much time studying her mother’s hands. There was no wedding ring; Evelyn had stopped wearing that a few years ago. It was one of those things Faith didn’t notice at first. Or maybe her mother was just a good liar. She’d laughed when Faith asked about her naked hand, saying, “Oh, I took that off ages ago.”
    Was her mother a liar? That was the central question. Faith lied to Jeremy all the time, but it was about things all mothers should lie to their children about: her dating life, what was happening at work, how she was managing her health. Evelyn had lied about Zeke being transferred back to the U.S. But, that was to keep the peace, and probably to prevent Zeke’s disapproval from shadowing the happy occasion of Emma’s birth.
    Those sorts of lies didn’t count. They were protective lies, not malignant lies that festered like a splinter under your skin. Had Evelyn lied to Faith in a way that counted? There was something bigger that Evelyn was hiding, something more than the obvious. Evelyn’s house told that story. The circumstances of her kidnapping delivered chapter and verse. She had something in her possession that some very bad men wanted. There was a drug connection. There was at least one gang involved. Her mother had worked narcotics. Had she been sitting on a pile of cash all this time? Was there a secret vault hidden somewhere? Would Faith and Zeke find out when Evelyn’s will was read that their mother was actually wealthy?
    No, that wasn’t possible. Evelyn would know that her children would turn over any illicit cash, no matter how much easier it would make their lives. Mortgages. Car payments. Student loans. None of that would go away. Neither Zeke nor Faith would ever take dirty money. Evelyn had raised them better than that.
    And she had raised Faith to be a better cop than to just sit around on her hands all night waiting for the sun to come up.
    If Evelyn were here right now, what would she want Faith to do? The obvious answer was to call Amanda. The two women had always been close. “Thick as thieves,” Bill Mitchell had often said, and not with flattery. Even after Faith’s uncle Kenny had decided to make an ass of himself pursuing younger women on the beaches of South Florida, Evelyn had made it clear that she preferred to have Amanda at the family Christmas table rather than Kenny Mitchell. The two women shared a shorthand the way soldiers did when they came back from war.
    But calling Amanda now was out of the question. She would come rushing in like a bull in a china shop. Faith’s house would be turned upside down. A SWAT team would be in place. The kidnappers would take one look at the show of force and decide it was easier to put a bullet in their victim’s head rather than negotiate with a woman who was hell-bent on revenge. Because that was exactly how Amanda would play it. She never went at anything quietly. It was always a hundred percent or nothing at all.
    Will was good at going in soft. He’d perfected the technique. And he was her partner. She should call him, or at least get word to him. But what would she say? “I need your help but you can’t tell Amanda and we may end up breaking the law, but please don’t ask any questions.” It was an untenable position. He’d bent the rules for her yesterday, but she couldn’t ask him to break them. There was no one else she would trust more to have her back, but Will had a sometimes vexing sense of right and wrong. Part of her was afraid that he would tell her no. And a larger part of her was afraid that she would end up getting him into the kind of trouble that he could never get out of. It was one thing for Faith to throw her career out the window. She couldn’t ask Will to do the same.
    She dropped her head into her hands. Even if she wanted to reach out, the phones were tapped in case a ransom demand was made. Her email was through her GBI account, which was more than likely being monitored. They were probably listening in on her cell phone calls, too.
    And that was just the good guys. Who knew what Evelyn’s kidnappers had managed to do? They knew Jeremy’s nickname, his birth year, his school. They had sent a warning through his Facebook account. Maybe they had bugged the house, too. You could get spy-quality